Cooper Union postcards and stereoscopes

Collection

Identifier: MG.031

Staff Only

Abstract

The Cooper Union postcards and stereoscopes collection contains 204 items featuring Cooper Union scenes. The postcards and stereoscopes in this collection primarily feature the Foundation Building and the Bowery from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, but there are also some images of Green Camp and the Cooper Union Museum, as well as a few special-edition Lincoln Sesquicentennial Series postcards featuring Abraham Lincoln in the Great Hall.

Dates

Creation: Unknown

Conditions Governing Access

Open to researchers without restriction

Conditions Governing Use

Permission to publish materials must be obtained in writing from The Cooper Union Archives and Special Collections. For more information, please email archives@cooper.edu.

Biographical / Historical

The Cooper Union campus has fluctuated in size over the decades, but its nucleus has always been the Foundation Building, which features in most of the images in this collection. While the exterior of the Foundation Building has remained fundamentally unchanged since it was built in the 1850s, the neighborhood around it has fluctuated as much if not more than the Cooper campus, and these changes are revealed in postcards and sterescopes: variations in the size and shape of Cooper Square and Astor Place; in the heights and signage of buildings; in the vehicles and pedestrians on the street; and, most strikingly, in the presence or absence of the Third Avenue Elevated that ran down from 1878 until its deconstruction in 1955.